2007 December

How can a blogger become a paid newspaper columnist?

12/18/2007 By Joan 7 Comments

Kelly Moore of Des Moines, Iowa writes:

Kelly Moore “I have been the number-one ‘community’ (just a fancy way of saying ‘unpaid’) blogger for a local magazine in our city for more than a year. The magazine is owned by our city’s daily newspaper. Consequently, I was able to find out that my page-views not only outshine the other magazine bloggers’ (staff included), they also stack up extremely well as compared to the daily newspaper’s own bloggers, including their print columnists.

“I’d like to parlay my readership success from this unpaid blog into a more high-profile (and hopefully profit-generating) pursuit. In particular, I’d like to pitch myself as a regular columnist for the daily newspaper, but I’m unsure how to go about it.

“You can see my blog. I write about parenthood (note I did not say ‘parenting,’ as that implies I dole out advice). My goal is to entertain by showing other moms and dads the humor in the every day of parenthood and to ease the guilt that seems almost epidemic these days.

“Hope you and your readers have some good suggestions for me…”

Filed Under: Blogs, Newspaper Publicity, Publicity on the Internet

‘Best of ProfNet’ list promotes PR agency

12/18/2007 By Joan 1 Comment

‘Tis the season for “Best of” lists.

The Morris + King Co., a New York City PR firm, issued its own Top 10 “Best of ProfNet” list.

ProfNet is a subscription service that forwards leads from working journalists to PR people. M + K chose the funniest and most peculair reporter leads of this past year.

Like the one from the Parents magazine writer looking for a circus lion tamer to pass along tips to parents on how to get bad kids to behave. Or the lead looking for sources who can discuss how barflies can stay in shape by doing exercises at the bar.

This year, M + K honors a journalist “who consistently exhibited a special aptitude for producing unbelievably unique ProfNet queries that have been both compelling in content and colorful in voice…Journalists and PR professionals alike can stand to learn from her colorful use of the system.”

She’s Lenore Skenazy, a humor columnist for the New York Sun, who submitted leads like this one called “Fun with Circumcision”:

Clip and save. That is the message New York is considering giving its men (and new parents, I think). Since circumcision seems to be preventing some cases of AIDS in Africa, New York is considering pushing it here, too. My angle: What will be the ad campaign? I’m doing a column on fun ideas for subway posters, radio ads, TV spots. Yes, an excuse for all sorts of jokes Feel free to join in.

The list is must reading. If you like her wacky ProfNet leads, you’ll love her columns.

What “Best of” or “Worst of” lists can you create right now to promote your own company? The lists are among the nine types of briefs I discuss on “Briefs, Fillers & Quizzes: How to Write Them and Why Editors LOVE Them”

Filed Under: Blogs, Business Promotion, Media Leads, PR Consultants/Publicists

Book tours being replaced by virtual tours

12/12/2007 By Joan Leave a Comment

Book tours—which can be expensive and time-consuming—are falling out of favor, and being replaced by podcasts, film tours, blog tours, book videos, and book trailers.

This article in the Christian Science Monitor speculates as to whether the cumulative effect of a huge online presence will one day make the face-to-face bookstore meeting between writer and reader obsolete. I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. I’ve never met an author who enjoyed traipsing around the country from bookstore to bookstore.

Thanks to Dan Poynter, whose ezine tipped us off to this one.

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers, Blogs, Publicity on the Internet

Laurel, Montana photo studio needs publicity ideas

12/11/2007 By Joan 16 Comments

Anchor Photography photo Kammy Thurman of Laurel, Montana writes:

“I hope your Hounds can help our photography studio, Anchor Photography. We’ve been in business several months and we want to become the most recognized studio in our area.

“That will be tough because we’re up against studios that have been in business for 30 to 50 years, and more. I am trying to think of ways to use publicity because the other studios don’t do this, and I know it would build visibility fast. I’m just trying to think of ways to that aren’t blatant advertising.”

Filed Under: Business Promotion, Photos & Graphics

I-team story on dirty hotel glasses: How would you respond?

12/11/2007 By Joan 78 Comments

OK, Hounds. Let’s see you match wits with the crisis counselors.

Watch this four-and-a-half-minute video, an I-team investigation by a TV station in Atlanta, Georgia, that shows the unsanitary way that three local hotels clean dirty drinking glasses and coffee cups.

The team took hidden cameras into guest rooms at three major hotels—Embassy Suites, Holiday Inn and Sheraton Suites—and learned that in all three cases, housekeepers never used soap and hot water to clean the dirty glasses. In fact, the glasses never left the guest rooms.

At the Embassy Suites, for example, a housekeeper put a used glass inside the dirty sink, sprayed a blue liquid on it, and then dried it with a cloth. She held it up to the light to make sure it looked squeeky clean.

In all three cases, when asked to comment, the hotel management never fessed up to any wrongdoing, even though the video shows otherwise and the TV station quoted health officials as saying the cleaning methods were unacceptable. A spokesperson from the Sheraton refused to comment, saying “It’s too controversial an issue.”

If you had been in charge at one of those hotels, and the I-team put you on the hot seat, what would you have said? Would you have commented at all?

Next week, I’ll tell you what the crisis counselors had to say. The Hound whose response most closely matches theirs wins a very cool prize.

Filed Under: Crisis Communications, PR Consultants/Publicists, TV Publicity